Month: September 2013

The fine art of world-building

Maximum Z inciting incident, protagonist, screenwriting, script, story, storytelling, structure, writing , , , ,
Tell us what we need to know about this place
Now that you’ve created it, what do we need to know about it?

One of the primary functions of the first act is to establish the current situation of your protagonist. You, the writer, have to convey to us, the reader/audience, what’s going on around our hero and how they fit into this scenario.

Tell us what we need to know about them, but don’t overwhelm us. Give us the details relevant to the story; anything else is totally unnecessary.

Show us why this character is worth our time and attention. What is it about them we can relate to?  Make us care about them. Pique our interest and curiosity.

This is also your chance to establish the rules of this world you’ve created and how it works. If it’s something other than the world as we know it (i.e. science fiction or fantasy), then you definitely need to explain how things work here. Don’t expect us to know what you’re talking about; just because you know doesn’t mean we’re going to. Keep things simple.

Now that you’ve presented us with our protagonist and the world they live in, SOMETHING HAPPENS around page 10 that drastically changes their everyday routine and gets the story going. It also raises the central question of the story – “Will the protagonist achieve their goal?”

Some may say the protagonist should be the one that makes something happen, which is possible, but it seems more likely this disrupting-of-the-everyday-routine event happens to them, rather than because of them.

What’s great about this next stretch of pages is it offers you the opportunity to show a little more of this world, especially how your protagonist reacts to what’s happened to them as well as how their world responds to it. Explore the consequences and ramifications of how their life is changing as they leave their old situation behind and become more involved with the new one.

By the time we get to the end of the first act, the protagonist is totally immersed in this new world and has to figure their way out/through it. Everything we need to know has been taken care of, so now we can focus on following the story.

Hey kids! Fill in the blanks!

Maximum Z creativity, genre, loglines, movies, pitching, reading, screenwriting, script, story, title, writing ,
The good news is this will not count towards your final grade
The good news is this will not be on the final, but neatness does count

Since I’m always interested in what other writers are working on, here are some questions I’d really like to see your answers to.

1. MY LATEST PROJECT IS TITLED _______________

2. IT’S A  ______________ (genre)

3. HERE’S THE LOGLINE __________________________________

4. THINK OF IT AS ___________ + __________

Here’s mine:

1. NORTH POLE’S MOST WANTED

2. mystery-comedy

3. A mild-mannered elf uncovers a sinister plot to get rid of Santa, but nobody believes him, somebody’s now trying to kill him, and Christmas is one week away.

4. LA CONFIDENTIAL + RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER

Now you.

The writing sprint: no training necessary

Maximum Z comedy, creativeness, creativity, ideas, inspiration, mystery, productivity, proofreading, rewrite, scenes, screenwriting, script, spec, story, storytelling, westerns, writing
race
It’s not about speed; it’s how you handle the course

Finally, finally got to type in those illustrious words FADE OUT, which brings the first draft of the western spec to a satisfying close.

It’s very tempting to read it and see what needs work, but at this point, I’m opting to let it sit in hibernation while shifting the focus to the rewrite of the mystery-comedy.

While the previous draft is a more solid foundation than I thought, there are still some ideas I’m looking to incorporate.

Rather than jot a few down at a time, or hope inspiration hits every once in a while, I’m opting for a method that’s proven quite helpful in the past: the writing sprint.

Set aside 30 minutes. Just you and a blank page (paper or digital – doesn’t matter, although digital might be easier & faster to work with). Once that timer starts, write out scene ideas as fast as you can.  Don’t stop to think if they’re good or not. Just crank ’em out.

It’s not a bad thing to write what you already have, but maybe you’ll come up with something you never thought of, or suddenly hit on a solution to a problem that’s been bothering you.  Feel free to even take things a totally new direction. For now, there are no bad ideas.

It’s possible you could run out of gas before time runs out, but push yourself to keep going.

Once the 30 minutes is up, take a look at what you’ve got: a ton of (mostly) new material.

Pick and choose what works for you now, but make sure to hold on to the rest. Inspiration could hit from any of them, and you never know what might come in handy later.